Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A at a Town Hall Meeting
Midwest Airline Center
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
September 10, 2004

5:08 P.M. CDT

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

MRS. CHENEY: Wow.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you all very much.

MRS. CHENEY: Dick, this is a really special crowd. But I tell
you, I'm just touched in my heart by that introduction from Bart
Starr. What a wonderful man he is. (Applause.)

And we have had a great day in Wisconsin. I'm telling you it is
the most beautiful day. You've got the most beautiful state, and we
have just enjoyed traveling around. We've got a bus outside. And it
has been terrific. So far I've eaten bratwurst and custard. (Laughter
and applause.)

Well, I get to introduce Dick. And I have this job because I have
known him for such a long time, and they think I'm an expert. I guess
I am. (Laughter.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: If you aren't, I don't know who is.
(Laughter.)

MRS. CHENEY: No, that's true. I have known him since he was 14
years old. And when I first knew him, he was working at the Ben
Franklin store in Casper, Wyoming. And his job was sweeping out the
store. It gave him some executive experience, right? (Laughter.) But
I like to tell about all the jobs that Dick has had since I've known
him. He used to dig ditches at the Central Wyoming Fair and Rodeo
Grounds outside our hometown in Casper. He used to load bentonite,
100-pound bags of bentonite onto railroad cars. That was one of his
jobs. He built power line across the West. That was the job he used
to pay his way through school. And I like to tell all those stories
because I think when you grow up working hard, you learn some really
significant lessons. And one of those lessons is how important it is
for the hard working men and women of this country to get to keep as
much of their paychecks as possible. (Applause.)

Well, we've had a wonderful time campaigning. It can be hard at
times. It's a lot of travel, but this is the most beautiful country.
This is such a great country, and we have so much to be proud of as
Americans. (Applause.) And if I were going to make a list of all of
the things we have to be proud of, right at the top, I would put our
President, George W. Bush. (Applause.) He has been a magnificent
leader over these past four years. And if you'll permit me to say so,
the Vice President is no slouch either. (Applause.)

So it gives me great pride to introduce to you to my husband, Dick
Cheney, the Vice President of the United States. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank
you for that warm welcome. It's great to be back in Wisconsin. We've
spent a little time here over the years.

I was reminiscing today the first time I traveled through eastern
Wisconsin in a political effort was 38 years ago with Warren Knowles,
who was then the governor of Wisconsin. I came to Wisconsin -- Lynne
and I did in January of 1966. We weren't newlyweds, but close to it.
And I worked for the Governor for about a year in 1966, campaigned all
over the state with him. And I remember campaigning with Bill Steiger,
great congressman from the sixth district. He's a good friend of
mine. (Applause.) And we're delighted today to have two of our
members of the Wisconsin delegation with us -- Paul Ryan and Jim
Sensenbrenner. (Applause.)

Of course, in those days in 1966, Bart Starr wasn't campaigning
with us. (Laughter.) He had a more important job. He's was a
quarterback for the Packers. (Applause.) We're delighted to be with
him. Bart extended the privilege to us. Four years ago we campaigned
with him across Wisconsin, and he brought us luck, so we thought we'd
come back again this year. And we're delighted that he's been willing
to spend some time with us today. (Applause.) And this looks like
Bush-Cheney country. (Applause.)

Lynne talks about knowing me since she was 14 years old. That's
true. But she wouldn't go out with until she was 17. (Laughter.) And
I like to talk a lot about the fact that we got married because of the
great Republican victory in 1952 when Dwight Eisenhower got elected
President. I see frowns in the audience. People say, all right. But
what happened in 1952, I lived with my folks in Lincoln, Nebraska --
just a youngster. Dad worked for the Soil Conservation Service.
Eisenhower got elected, reorganized the Agriculture Department. Dad
got transferred to Casper, Wyoming, which is where I met Lynne. And we
grew up together, went to high school together, and a week ago Sunday
celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. (Applause.) And I explained
to a group the other night that if it hadn't been for Eisenhower's
election victory, Lynne would have married somebody else. (Laughter.)
And she said, right, and now he'd be Vice President of the United
States. (Laughter and applause.) And every man in the audience knows
it's absolutely true. (Laughter.) That's the way it works.

But we are delighted to be here today. This has been a great trip
for us, starting in Green Bay and down through Sheboygan and so forth.
Wisconsin is an extraordinarily important state. It's a battleground
state. And that's why you're seeing so much of us. And I'm confident
on November 2nd, it's going to be in the winning Bush-Cheney column.
(Applause.) But we -- I say, Lynne and I feel like we've got Wisconsin
roots. We lived here longer than anyplace other than, I guess, Wyoming
or Washington and enjoyed very much our time here. We -- our oldest
daughter who is traveling with us today, is here someplace, Liz, was
born over in Madison while we were students over there, and while I was
working for the Governor. And we've been back many times over the
years, and we've got a lot of great friends all across Wisconsin.

But what we'd like to do today is spend a little bit of time, and
I've got a couple of thoughts I'd like to share with you about the
decisions and the issues that we're wrestling with this year, and then
throw it open to questions. And we'll have an opportunity to respond
to some of your concerns and comments, as well, too. We've done some
of these town hall meetings various places around the country. We like
the format. It seems to work well, and it gives us an opportunity to
hear from all of you, as well, too. So that's what we propose to do
here in the next period of time.

But let me begin by talking about the election this year, and about
the issues we're faced with because I do believe -- and I've been
involved in this business now for a long time -- I do believe this is
the most important election I've ever participated in. Now, you might
say, well, your name is on the ballot. Well, that's true.
(Laughter.) But more than that, I think it's one of those elections
that comes along every once in a while where as a nation we make a
decision about the course we're going to follow in the years ahead on
some basic, fundamental issues, such as defending the nation -- what
kind of national security strategy we're going to pursue, or what kind
of domestic policies we're going to pursue. And you can look back
through our history and find periods of time when we've made these
kinds of decisions, and then see that it became the basic course for
the country that was supported then sometimes for the next 30 or 40
years. And I think this may be that kind of an election. I think it's
true, especially in the national security area, but also to some extent
in the domestic area.

And let me begin by saying a few words about the economy. We think
that's an important issue this year. But then I also want to talk
about the war on terror, the challenges we're faced with there, too.
One the economic front, of course, when the President and I were sworn
in not quite four years ago now, three-and-a-half years ago, the
economy was sliding into recession. And of course, shortly after that
the attack of 9/11 came along and really shook the economy. We lost
about a million jobs within a matter of weeks after the attack of
9/11. The travel and tourism industry was hard hit, the airlines, and
so forth. To some extent, they're still suffering -- the airlines are
-- from the aftermath of that.

But we had to make some basic, fundamental decisions, the President
did. And he decided that the most important thing we could do from the
standpoint of reinvigorating the economy, and getting the economic
growth restored and creating jobs and doing all those things that are
so important to maintain a prosperous and healthy America and having
opportunities for all of those who want to work, was to leave more
money in the hands of the people who earned it, and so he decided to
cut taxes. (Applause.)

Now, there's some fundamental, underlying principles there when you
make that decision that I think the President got absolutely right, and
rather than have government take the money and spend it, that we were
going to get more prosperity, more growth, and wiser decisions
collectively as a nation if the American people were allowed to make
those decisions for themselves. So what we did was to move
aggressively to double the marriage credit -- the child credit, for
example, to reduce the marriage penalty, to cut rates across the board,
the create further incentives by allowing small businesses to expense
more so they can invest and create additional jobs. We repealed the
death tax so that over time people who had small businesses or farms
and ranches could pass it on to the next generation without having it
taxed away after they'd already paid tax on it during their lifetime --
a whole series of decisions; reduced the rate on capital gains, and
reduced the double-taxation of dividends so that we could stimulate
more growth, more savings, more investment in our economy -- a key
decision. Absolutely essential, going forward, though, that we keep
that basic, fundamental tax policy in place because the problem is that
those laws will sunset a few years down the road unless we extend them
by statute.

And there is a fundamental difference here between the way we look
at these operations, and that basic set of principles and the way
Senator Kerry looks at them. I think Senator Kerry has said,
specifically, that he would repeal many of the Bush tax cuts within his
first hundred days in office. He's called for tax increases. He's
called for $2 trillion in additional spending, and he's also said he's
got a goal of wanting to cut the deficit in half within four years. To
do that, to increase spending $2 trillion and cut the deficit at the
same time, there's only one way to do it, and that's with broad gauge,
across-the-board tax increases. And that's exactly what we don't need
at this time. If we're going to maintain the course we're on and
continue to create jobs, and continue to create expansion of the
economy and hope and opportunity for the American people economically,
we don't need another tax increase. (Applause.)

But there are a number of other things we need to do, too. And we
talk about a strong, healthy, growing economy and a prosperous America,
there isn't any one single sort of silver bullet that solves all the
problems. You got to address the issue in several ways. You've also
got to focus, as we talked about, on tax policy. You also need to have
a decent energy policy. There isn't any way we can have a strong
viable economy if we don't have adequate supplies of affordable energy
to run the economy with. (Applause.)

Now, we've been working on getting an energy bill through the
Congress. We've got it through the House of Representatives. It has
been passed a couple times now. It has been blocked in the Senate.
Last time, it came up two votes short in the Senate. Senators Kerry
and Edwards didn't even show up to vote. So we'll continue to work
that, to get a sound energy policy in place, one that encourages new
technologies and innovation, and conservation, and reduces our overall
dependence on foreign sources of energy.

Education comes immediately to mind. You cannot have a strong,
prosperous America without a good, solid, sound educational system.
You can't have people able to take advantage of the job opportunities
that are out there if they don't have an adequate education system.
And we can't achieve the hopes and dreams we want for our kids and
grandkids if they can't go through a first class education system and
acquire the skills they need in order to prosper later in life and to
be full functioning, effective members of our society.

Lynne and I both are products of public school. We got great
educations at public schools in Wyoming in our day. And it ought to be
that way for everybody all across the country. (Applause.) The first
piece of legislation the President introduced when he got sworn in was
the No Child Left Behind Act, the proposal that had been developed
first in Texas when he was governor, and then he brought it to
Washington -- basically, the idea of establishing high standards,
measuring performance and establishing accountability for parents and
teachers in our public school system so parents would know whether or
not the schools are producing the results that are needed with respect
to providing adequate education for their kids, and creating
alternatives if need be, so that if they were trapped in a failing
school, that they could move to another public school, an alternative
public school, or get support and assistance, for example, in
tutoring. A basic, fundamental decision that we think is very sound,
and we need to continue to work aggressively to improve on in the
future.

The health care costs are another prime area where you've got to be
able to have sound, intelligence policy if you're going to have a
strong, viable, functioning economy. Right now today, if you look at
the uninsured in America, about 60 percent of the uninsured are, in
fact, employees or owners of small businesses. And small businesses
are at the same time at the heart of our economic growth. They create
seven out of every 10 new jobs in America -- our small businesses. And
we got to find ways to make it possible for them to meet their needs
and requirements, and to be able to provide the health care benefits
for their workers when they want to do that. And part of that is some
of the proposals the President has put forth, for example, the whole
idea of health associations that would allow the pooling of small
businesses to come together and create a pool of insured and receive
the same kind of benefits and cost reductions that a major corporation
gets. It would help significantly in terms of providing an edge for
the small businesses in terms of meeting that basic, fundamental
requirement.

We need medical liability reform. One of the big problems we've
had all across the country is the cost of the malpractice insurance.
In a lot of states, my home state of Wyoming, for example, the cost of
malpractice insurance has gone up so high, so fast that doctors are
leaving the state. They aren't able to pay for the insurance in order
to be able to stay in business. In our hometown, the cost of a policy
for a general practitioner just to stay in business has gone from
$40,000 to $100,000 a year in about three years. We can't get docs to
come to the state when they get out of medical school because they need
$80,000 up front for the insurance policy to insure them against
medical malpractice liability. So that's an area that needs to be
addressed. We've succeeded in doing that in the House. We've gotten
legislation through the House. Again, it has been blocked in the
Senate. Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards don't believe in medical
liability reform. They're opposed to it. That's another area that
needs to be addressed. So a series of programs there where you'll find
fundamental differences, I believe, between what the President stands
for and represents, and what our opponents believe. And if there are
doubts about what they stand for and believe in, all you got to do is
look at the record. And I'll talk about that a bit more in a minute.
But the fact of the matter is, of course, John Kerry has been member of
the United States Senate for 20 years. A senator votes a lot, and you
can go look at the basic fundamental issues that were addressed over
that 20-year period of time and judge for yourself whether or not he
has voted in a way that is consistent with your views, your philosophy,
and what we think needs to be done for the country.

And I won't prejudge -- well, yes, I will. (Laughter.) I don't
think his philosophy is consistent with the one I've laid out. I don't
think it's consistent with the way folks here in Wisconsin believe, or
all out across the country. He may have done a good job of
representing Massachusetts, but Massachusetts isn't Wisconsin, or
Wyoming, or Texas. (Applause.)

The President laid out a series of these proposals in his
acceptance speech the other night in New York at what I think was a
great convention. I don't know how many of you saw it. But it was a
tremendous event. (Applause.) And I really enjoyed the convention.
I've done eight of them over the years. And they're always a very
special occasion, but I was really glad that Zell Miller, of Georgia,
is on our side. (Applause.) But we had a great line-up. Of course,
in addition, to the President and Laura, we had John McCain and Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Rudy Guiliani. (Applause.) It was a superb
convention.

But if you look at that, you'll see a lot of the basic ideas that
were laid out there that we think are important priorities for us in
the years ahead.

Let me spend a couple of minutes, if I can, on the national
security situation and the war on terror because it is so important,
and because I think -- as I said, earlier, this is one of those
watershed elections that may decide the course for the nation for a
good many years to come.

When we got hit on 9/11, it changed everything in a sense. It
forced us to think in new ways about the nature of the threat that we
face. Before we'd all gotten used to the Cold War, and the Soviet
threat, and the possibility of all-out global war with the Soviets.
But we'd put in place strategies that had prevented that, that had been
there for 40 years. The period after World War II, we created the
Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization. And then for about 40 years, we
supported, Republican and Democrat administrations alike, went forward
and pursued the policies of deterrence and containment that worked,
that allowed us to prevail in the Cold War without there ever being an
out-and-out conflict with the Soviet Union.

But when we start to think about what happened on 9/11, and how we
were hit that day, the damage that was done to us by 19 terrorists with
knives or box cutters and boarding passes, and the fact that they
killed 3,000 of our fellow citizens that morning, more people than we
lost at Pearl Harbor, worst attack ever on American soil by a foreign
power, then you have to think, well, does the old Cold War strategy
work when we're talking about terrorists? How do you deter a terrorist
who is committed to jihad, whose basic aim in life is to kill infidels,
especially Americans, who has no piece of real estate anyplace that he
values that you can hold at risk in order to deter him from an attack
against the United States? The whole concept doesn't make any sense
when you're talking about al Qaeda.

We've got to put together a brand new approach to defending the
nation given the nature of that threat. We also, as a result of a lot
of the work that's been done since 9/11, that the biggest threat we
face today is the possibility of a terror cell, an al Qaeda, a piece of
the al Qaeda organization, or other terror cell in the middle of one of
our own cities with a weapon of mass destruction -- that is to say,
with a biological agent, for example, or even an nuclear weapon.
That's the ultimate threat today that we have to contemplate. And we
have to make absolutely certain that that never happens in the United
States because if they ever acquired that kind of capability and were
able to bring it into the country, there is absolutely no reason why
they wouldn't use it. There's no restraint on their part. They will
kill anybody -- man, woman, or child -- that stands in their way.
We've seen that. We've had a lot of experience with that now. And we
know this is a global, worldwide problem because not only have we had
the issue since 9/11 after they hit the United States in New York and
Washington, and the United 93 that went down in Pennsylvania, we've
seen the attacks in Madrid, in Casablanca, in Mombassa, in Istanbul, in
Riyadh, in Bali and Jakarta. Most recently, of course, just within the
last week, they hit Indonesia again. They tried to go after the
Australian embassy. And most recently and devastatingly, they did hit
Russia -- took down two airliners, killed 90 people there, and then, of
course, over 350 people in Beslan when they took a school hostage. And
most of the dead are school children. That is the kind of enemy that
you can't negotiate with. You can't appease. There's no treaty at the
end of the day that will solve this problem. All you can do is go out
and defeat the enemy. That's the only solution. (Applause.)

What the President did after 9/11 was we created a new strategy, if
you will. We did some of the things that had been done before, but we
added to it. First and foremost, of course, we've moved aggressively
to try to make America a tougher target -- that is to put in place
policies and institutions that make it easier for us to keep out the
terrorists. We created the Department of Homeland Security. It's the
biggest reorganization of the federal government since the late 1940s,
when we created the Department of Defense. We passed the Patriot Act
that allows law enforcement personnel -- (Applause.) And the Patriot
Act needs to be renewed. Jim Sensenbrenner is chairman of the
committee. We got a shot at it next year. (Applause.) And we need to
continue that into the future -- a series of steps like that, designed
to make us tougher for the terrorists to come after.

But anybody who has followed the Green Bay Packers over the years
knows that a good defense isn't enough. You also have to go on
offense. (Applause.) We can be successful at defending against 99
percent of the attacks. But if 1 percent get through, given the sale
of the threat that's out there today, obviously, that's enough to kill
you. So you've got to do everything we can not only to defend the
nation, but also to go on offense. And that's a significant
contribution the President made in establishing what we've come to call
the Bush doctrine -- the idea that not only will be go after the
terrorists, do everything we can to take down the terrorists, and the
organizations, and the financial networks that support them, but also
we will, in fact, hold accountable for the actions of the terrorists,
those who sponsor terror -- who support it and provide safe harbor or
sanctuary for terrorists, who provide financial assistance or arms, or
training to terrorists. They will be held equally guilty of the crimes
committed by the terrorists as the terrorists themselves. (Applause.)

And that means you've got to use military force on occasion. And
that's exactly what we've done. In Afghanistan, of course, we moved
aggressively to take down the Taliban. We succeeded in doing that.
The troops performed magnificently. In a matter of weeks, we captured
or killed hundreds of al Qaeda. We closed down the training camps.
There had been training camps operating in Afghanistan in the latter
part of the '90s from about 1996 or '97 on, estimated 20,000 terrorists
went through those camps, including some of those who attacked us on
9/11. We closed down the camps. They're out of business, and of
course, in the interim we've gone forward to stand up a new government
in Afghanistan. We've got now Hamid Karzai as the interim President.
They'll have -- they have a constitution. They'll have free elections
here in a few weeks before we have our election. They've got 10
million Afghan citizens now registered to vote in the last few weeks,
to vote the first time ever in Afghanistan. (Applause.)

And we're standing up a new government in Afghanistan, a
democratically elected government that's not a threat to its neighbors,
and simultaneously training an Afghan national army and getting the
Afghans into the fight so they can provide for their own security as
the long-term strategy that we've got to pursue there.

In Iraq, of course, a somewhat different set of circumstances. We
went into Iraq because, of course, Saddam Hussein had for 12 years
defied the U.N. Security Council and the international community. He
had started two wars. He had previously produced and used weapons of
mass destruction on the Kurds, and on the Iranians. He had provided
sanctuary and safe harbor to terrorists. The Abu Nidal organization
operated out of Baghdad for years. Saddam himself had spent $25,000 --
rewards for the families of suicide bombers. There was a relationship
with al Qaeda. This was an evil, evil regime that was an emerging
threat that also needed to be dealt with, and the world is a whole lot
safe today, and the American people are safer because Saddam Hussein is
in jail. (Applause.)

In Iraq, we're also working on standing up a new government. We've
got an interim government appointed there. Mr. Allawi is the Prime
Minister. All of the ministries now in Iraq, all of the agencies are
now run by Iraqis. They have just recently appointed a national
advisory council. They'll have elections in January. Those elections
will produce a constitutional assembly. They'll write a new
constitution, and by the end of next year, they'll hold free elections
under a new constitution and elect for the first time a government,
democratically elected government in Iraq.

And we are simultaneously working very hard today to train security
forces in Iraq that can take over the responsibility for securing their
own country. I don't want to mislead anybody into thinking this is an
easy chore. This isn't easy. This is very hard. What we're trying to
do in those countries that have never known the kinds of systems that
we want to establish is one of the most difficult challenges any
government can undertake. We've taken casualties here in our own --
with respect to our military forces because of the terrible task that
they have had to do. But it was absolutely essential that we achieve
our results there. And we can't simply pursue a strategy that is based
on the old mind set, pre-9/11 mind set. We used to think and operate
as a government that somehow the solution to a terrorist attack was to
treat it as a criminal act. So we'd go out and we'd prosecute the
individual criminal, treat it as a law enforcement matter, put him in
jail, and case closed. But what we didn't realize was it wasn't an
individual criminal act. We were at war. We had been war, as far as
the terrorists were concerned in the al Qaeda organization, since about
1996, when they declared war on us. And there was a series of attacks
over the years -- 1993, the first World Trade Center; 1996, Khobar
Towers; 1998, East Africa embassy bombings; year 2000, the USS Cole --
where Americans were killed, either here at home, or overseas. And the
terrorists had taken away from that the belief that they could strike
us with impunity because they had. There was rarely a price paid by
the organization itself for what they did. And they believed they
could change our policy because they had in places like Somalia where
they hit us, killed 19 of our guys in Mogadishu, in 1993, and within a
matter of weeks, we had withdrawn our forces from Somalia.

So the task we're embarked upon here, the course we're embarked
upon here requires us to go beyond just killing terrorists. We've got
to go to the point, as well, of changing the circumstances on the
ground, strategically of putting in place, in the heart of the Middle
East in those areas that have been the breeding grounds for terror,
democratically elected governments that are representative of their
people that aren't threats to anybody, and that no longer breed the
kind of terrorism, or the failed states, or the safe harbor and
sanctuary for terrorists that we've seen all too often in the past.
That's the key to the strategy. (Applause.)

Now, we can do it. We've got a good start. The President's
leadership has been instrumental in all of this in terms of setting us
on the right course. But it's important as we think about the election
this year, a decision that the American people have to make is: Do we
want to pursue that strategy that we think is the right way to go, and
that the President has been -- had us all pursuing now for now over
three years? Or do we want to go back to the failed -- what I think
were the failed policies, pre-9/11. The policies we pursued before
9/11 didn't impose any price on the terrorists, didn't ever wrap up
those who support terror, and of course, didn't do anything to
discourage the attacks because we got hit on 9/11. And we had the
training camps operating in Afghanistan, breeding more terror that
ultimately led to the attacks not only in the United States but around
the world. We've got to pursue a more aggressive strategy, and that's
exactly what we're doing. (Applause.)

Now, I asked -- a lot of Americans have asked legitimately, well,
what does John Kerry think we ought to do with respect to this issue.
And again, there's a record there that is enlightening. And let me say
and emphasize, and I've said this over and over again, I said it the
other night in my speech at the Republican Convention, we honor John
Kerry for his military service. As a veteran in Vietnam, he deserves
the thanks of all of us. And we are not in the business of challenging
his patriotism. They'll say that occasionally. We've never done
that. I do challenge his judgment. (Applause.)

I can look at 20 years of voting in the United States Senate, and I
see a senator who has consistently voted in a way that I think doesn't
reflect the views, and the philosophy, and the attitude of the man who
would pursue the kind of strategy that I think is essential if we're
going to prevail in the war on terror. I see a man who voted against
most of the Reagan military proposals in the 1980s. I see a man who
when he ran for the Senate in 1984, proposed cutting or eliminate some
65 of our basic weapons systems, including things like the B-2 and the
Tomahawk cruise missile and so forth. I see a man who, in 1990 and
1991, when we were getting ready to do Desert Storm, opposed Desert
Storm -- stood up on the floor of the Senate and argued against the
action we took to liberate Kuwait and send Saddam Hussein back to
Baghdad. I see a Senator who argued for the go to war resolution, the
authorization of the use of force against Saddam Hussein two years ago
when the President asked for it, but then came around some months later
when it was time to vote for the funds that were needed to equip the
troops that we'd sent into combat, he voted no. There

are only four members of the United States Senate who voted to
commit the force, and then voted against providing the resources they
needed once they were in combat -- only four. Two of those four were
Senators Kerry and Edwards. Now that is not a record that to my mind
inspires confidence that this is a man who is -- got the qualifications
to do what I think needs to be done as Commander-in-Chief. I think
George Bush is the right man for that job. (Applause.)

Now, the fact is a senator can be wrong for 20 years -- year after
year after year -- without consequence for the nation. But a President
-- a President -- always has the deciding vote. And we've got a
President now who gets it right. And that's exactly why we need George
Bush for the next four years. (Applause.)

Now, there's one more point I want to make, and then I'll stop so
we have an opportunity to hear from all of you. None of what we've
been able to do over the course of the last three years would have been
possible without the superb performance of the men and women of the
United States military. (Applause.) So I'd like to close my remarks
today by thanking them, but also all of our veterans here who have
served over the years in whatever capacity, in whatever war for what
they've done for all of us. We wouldn't be here today without all of
them. Thank you, gentlemen. (Applause.)

Now, the way we try to do this -- we've got some folks wandering
around in the audience out there in orange vests.

MRS. CHENEY: They're not wandering.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, all right, they're not wandering,
they're purposeful. (Laughter.) Orange vests, they've got numbers on
them. And they've got microphones with them. And if you'd like to ask
a question or make a comment, just hold up your hand and they'll try to
connect to you. And then I'll try to respond to your comments or your
concerns. Yes, sir, back here.

Q When you become Vice President and Mr. Bush becomes
President, we will be all so very happy. I have a comment. If you
always -- there's an old saying that I heard about and I believe in --
if you always say what you always did, you're always going to get what
you always got. (Laughter.) And prior to 9/11, that's how it was. My
belief is that we have not done what we always did. And George Bush
and Dick Cheney are the ones to move us forward. After 9/11, and
tomorrow is the anniversary, what do you foresee in the future as far
as where the country is going to, as far as protecting us?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Tomorrow is the third anniversary of that day
that, obviously, none of us will ever forget who witnessed it. I would
like to be able to say to everybody, relax, no problem. I can't say
that.

We know that the terrorists are out there, that they're trying very
hard to organize further attacks, that they continue to plot and plan.
We continue to wrap them up, to break up the cells, to disrupt
operations. We've gotten better I think -- both our intelligence
services and the way we've established the relationships with others
around the world, other intelligence services, so we've had a lot of
success against them. And we've arrested or killed, as I say, more --
probably a majority of the senior folks who were involved in al Qaeda
at the time that they launched the 9/11 attack. But we can, by no
means, relax. The evidence is there for anybody who wishes to look
that they are actively and aggressively engaged various places around
the world. Fortunately, nobody has been able to get off an attack
against the United States for three years. But we should by no means
put down our guard.

One of the lessons we learned in watching what happened earlier
this year is what happened in Spain. In March, when the terrorists
decided that they would try to influence the outcome of that election
by launching terrorist attacks just a short period of time before the
election. So that's something we have to be concerned about here, as
well, too. We have to learn to live with the fact that we've got to
take extra precautions, that we do, indeed, have to support the effort
that is required by the government, by state and local officials, by
first responders, our police and fire and medical personnel. I know
it's frustrating to get on the airplane lots of times and have to go
through that whole process that folks have to go through, but there's
no reason in the world why we can't do it and why we can't succeed.

When you think about the challenges this nation has surmounted over
the years, this is a war we can win. There's no doubt in my mind
whatsoever. But we have to recognize we are engaged in a war. There's
an adversary out there that will do everything they can to get us. And
what we need to do is to pull up our socks and support the kind of
strong policies we need in order to make certain that over the long
term we can pass on the nation to our kids and grandkids safer and more
secure than we found it. (Applause.)

Q I'd just like to ask a question on the economy. On the other
side of the spectrum, Senator Kerry and his partner are saying that
this economy is in the ditch. I live in a middle class neighborhood in
Oak Creek, Wisconsin. And I look out in just the peripheral vision
right in my house I see 14 brand new automobiles. Why is that I see
all these cars when the economy is doing bad? People don't buy cars in
a bad economy. Tell me, what's up with that? (Laughter and applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think the economy is kicking along in
pretty good shape. The President and I would not suggest that it's
perfect. It never is. There's always going to be soft spots out
there, or communities that are going through transitions. Sometimes
you get industries or businesses that are on their way out, and new
ones emerging. That's part of having a dynamic economy. And we've got
the -- our economy is the envy of the world because it is dynamic,
because it is changing, and growing and developing. And we got new
technologies coming in, and new kinds of businesses created, and whole
new industries that didn't even exist 15 or 20 years ago that today are
sources of employment and productivity and wealth for our economy.

John Kerry says this is the worst economy since the Great
Depression. (Laughter.) I think he's been windsurfing too much.
(Applause.)

Q Wisconsin is a compassionate state, so we're all concerned
about the uninsured. Could you explain the difference between your
policy and the Democrats'? And what individual consumers could do to
address this problem?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the whole area of health and the
uninsured is a very important one. I look at the Democratic proposals
that Senator Kerry has put forward, and basically it's an
all-government solution. I think ultimately it heads down the road
towards nationalizing the health care industry. I think it's the wrong
way to go.

I think, instead, it's better to look at the kinds of solutions the
President has put forward. The whole notion of health savings
accounts, for example, we find very attractive. We think that's going
to help significantly. HSAs basically provide a way for people to save
tax-free for their own immediate medical expenses. And one of the
things we want to pursue no in a second term is a refundable tax credit
so that small business owners will be able to contribute to the health
insurance costs of their employees.

Sixty percent -- as I think I mentioned, 60 percent of our
uninsured in the country are the employees of small businesses. And a
good way to address the issue is to begin to focus on that capability.
The idea of health savings accounts -- and also including in it a
provision that we want to work towards, of allowing for the
deductibility, the tax deductibility of the cost of a health care
premium that an individual buys, for example, a catastrophic policy
through their health savings accounts would be a significant step
forward.

The other great thing about the HSA concept is that's something you
take with you. If you pick up and move, you change jobs, you go from
one community to another, that's your account, you take it with you.
It's got the tax has been built-up -- it's a tax-free account in terms
of the deductions -- the contributions you make to that account. And
it begins to address the issue of how to do that, and it gives you
control over your own insurance situation. Those are some of the kinds
of things that we think would go a long way towards addressing this
issue, as well as I talked about the pooling arrangements for small
businesses, as well, too.

But if you go after that piece of it, you solve a big part of the
problem. And the other end of it is you got to work on the cost side
of it. One of the things the President has proposed and that we're
pushing hard is to do a better job in terms of building the database
and transforming the way we keep medical information about everybody,
and then going to a digital forum and automating the whole system away
from the way we keep records now. That will do a lot to make it -- in
terms of the quality of care that's delivered, much more efficient to
reduce the incidence of mistakes and errors, in terms of medical care.
And all of that serves to help reduce the cost, as well, and that feeds
back into the availability and the cost of what it costs to acquire
insurance, health insurance. So I think we've got a much better
approach that is based upon structures that are out there, or that
plays to people's normal natural desires to want to make those
decisions for themselves, rather than have the bureaucracy in
Washington make those decisions, or to get between the patient and the
doctor. We think that's the wrong way to go. We think that at the end
of the day is where you'll end up if you follow John Kerry's
recommendations. (Applause.)

Somebody back here.

Q Recently, the price of crude oil has jumped significantly. I
was just wondering that when you and the President are reelected, what
are some of the plans that you have for our foreign -- I mean our
national energy policy? Thanks.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, if you look at the proposal that we put
forward and have been working on now for the last three years, it does
a number of things. We've put in place -- we had 106 recommendations
that came out. There was a book that we published in the spring of
2001. It's the backbone of what we recommended. It dealt with
conservation. It dealt with the new technologies. It dealt with
renewable fuels. Some of the things that are provided for in the
legislation we've been pushing, as I say, that we're so far only two
votes short of getting through the Senate do such things as promote the
use of clean coal technology so we can rely more upon the basic,
fundamental resource we've got here in the country. We get half of our
electric power today from coal. We need to be able to use that
resource. But we need to be able to burn it cleanly so that we don't
create environmental problems with it. It talks a lot about renewable
fuels, and about the importance, for example, of moving in the
direction of using ethanol, which will help significantly in terms of
our ability to be able to produce here at home a component that can
help significantly in the transportation area and be a substitute, and
an additive to our petroleum base. We need to do everything we can to
improve conservation because there are significant savings to be
derived there, as well. And we've done that over the years. If you
look at what we've achieved as a nation, we use about half as much
energy per unit of output today as we did 20 years ago. We've just
gotten better at how we use it, more efficient at how we use it. We
need to continue to do that. We need to look at hydrogen fuel cycles,
and a whole range of new technologies out there that offer the hope
that we'll be able do more in the future.

We also believe that it's important to move aggressively with
respect to supporting efforts to develop more of our resources here at
home, and do everything we can to reduce our dependence on foreign
sources. We're never going to get totally out of that business. But
at bottom, we cannot have a strong, viable economy if we don't have
adequate supplies of affordable energy for the American people. The
economy will not work without energy. You can't heat your homes. You
can't drive your car. You can't run your business. And so that will
be a prime area of focus for us in the years ahead. As I say, we've
got 106 recommendations; about 85 we could do administratively and
have. But the rest require legislation, and that's what is pending now
before the Congress.

Let me move around over here. You got somebody over here?
(Applause.)

MODERATOR: The Vice President has time for just one additional
question.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right, thank you, Paul. We may violate
that and take one or two. Go ahead. That's all right. (Laughter.)

Q First of all, Lynne, listening to you introduce your husband
in New York, we like A&W root beer here also. It must be the W.
(Laughter.)

MRS. CHENEY: Very good.

Q But the substance of my comments are the W, I want it to
stand for workforce. And I know you do, too. Mr. Vice President, I
want to extend on behalf of the Milwaukee community and County Exec
Scott Walker and our Mayor and others to visit the state of the art
Bradley Technical High School because I think every city in this
country must rebuild its skilled workforce to protect our
infrastructure. You need them in the military. We need them in the
fire department. We need police. We need people to maintain the air
conditioning. And I'd like to extend the invitation for your and the
President to visit this $55 million investment. Thank you.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right, we'll put it on the list. We'd
like to do that. Thank you. (Applause.)

He's got a young man right down here in the front. These are
always the toughest questions. (Laughter.)

Q When you were talking about your national security idea. You
mentioned they could have nuclear weapons. Do you think we are going
to invade North Korea and Iran then, or just try and hold them off?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's a good question. (Applause.) I'll
repeat the question. The basic question is, given the fact that we're
concerned about the terrorists acquiring something as deadly as nuclear
weapons, what is the proposition with respect to North Korea and Iran?
How do we address those issues?

And what we're trying to do, obviously, both in the case of North
Korea and Iran are address those issues diplomatically, try to resolve
by peaceful means the matter of persuading them that they don't need
nuclear weapons, that they shouldn't want nuclear weapons, that it's
not in their interest to develop that capability.

The situation obviously that we think holds promise is what
happened in Libya. Remember what happened there, we had a situation
where we launched -- after we had done Afghanistan, as we launched into
Iraq, about that time we were contacted by Colonel Ghadafi, the leader
of Libya, said he wanted to talk with us about his WMD programs, his
weapons of mass destruction programs. He was he was trying to develop
nuclear weapons and so forth. I might point out that when he contacted
us, he didn't call the United Nations. He got hold of George Bush and
Tony Blair. (Applause.)

And that -- so after several months of negotiation, then five days
after we captured Saddam Hussein, Colonel Ghadafi announced that he was
going to give up all of his WMD, and so all of that material now that
he had acquired, the uranium, the centrifuges used to enrich uranium,
the design for a nuclear weapon, all of that, he turned over to us.
And it is now under lock and key down at Oak Ridge, in Tennessee.
(Applause.)

He made a good decision. And the fact of the matter is, there's no
need -- no need for a nation like that to acquire nuclear weapons
capability. And the message that needs to be conveyed to the Iranians
and the North Koreans, and that we do diplomatically as we work with
our other nations that are interested here is that their long-term
interests aren't served by acquiring nuclear weapons. Their long-term
interest is served by establishing normal relations with the United
States, by having an opportunity to trade in the international
marketplace, to engage in the free flow of commerce and goods and
services and so forth back and forth across international boundaries.
And that's the way to improve the living standard for their people;
it's not to go acquire nuclear weapons.

In Iran, of course, the effort is being worked now through the
board of governors, the International Atomic Energy Agency. The
Germans, the Brits, and the French are heavily involved in that. And
in North Korea, we're working with the Chinese, the South Koreans, the
Japanese, and the Russians in a series of talks, but should have some
more talks, again, here in the future, where we sit down -- in effect,
with a six-way conversation. The process is persuading the North
Koreans that they need to give up their aspirations in this area.

Hopefully, the peaceful approach, diplomacy will work. We think
that's the right way to go. We ran into a problem where Saddam Hussein
was concerned, obviously, because for 12 years he defied the
international community. He thumbed his nose at the United Nations.
He violated 16 different U.N. Security Council resolutions, as I say,
started two wars, had produced and developed deadly capability he'd
used against his own people and against his neighbors. So that was a
different, more critical situation. But we do need to continue to
address both the Iranian and North Korea problem. And so we will do
exactly that.

One more question and then we'll -- back here.

Q Mr. Vice President, I'm here today with the Marquette
University College Republicans. (Applause.) I'm also the proud son of
a Vietnam veteran, and I'm proud to say that our household supports
George Bush and Dick Cheney.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.)

Q A few months ago, I was flipping through Time Magazine. And
it was the issue where President Clinton's book excerpts were printed.
And in it he talks the threat that we faced during the Cold War, and
the threat that we faced now with the war on terrorism. And he claimed
that the threat that we face now isn't as dangerous as the one that we
faced during the Cold War, and therefore we shouldn't be as worried
about the threat that we face from terrorism. Now, I don't see that as
being an accurate portrayal. And I don't think anyone else in here
does, either. And I believe this is just as dangerous of an ideology
as the threat that we face from terrorism itself. How do we combat
that liberal ideology here in the United States?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think you elect George Bush President of the
United States on November 2nd. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you all very much. We went to
thank you for being here today. We really enjoyed it, and we look
forward to a great victory on November 2nd in Wisconsin.